“I never said I murdered them.”
“You said you killed them.”
“So I did.”
“So you said it or so you killed them?”
/> “Both.”
“Since when is killing somebody not murder? What if I get in the way of the mission . . . you’d kill me too, wouldn’t you? Is that what they did in Abkhazia? Got in your way?”
“I’m not going to talk about Abkhazia.”
“Why not? You said it wasn’t classified.”
“You asked if it was classified and I answered that it was painful. That is not the same as saying it wasn’t classified.”
“So it is classified? Why do you talk in circles like that? Look, I’m going to be honest with you, Op Nine. I’m a little freaked out right now. I’ve been lied to . . .”
“By whom? Who has lied to you?”
“I—I’m not sure, but somebody has.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alfred.”
“Well, of course you’re going to say you don’t know what I’m talking about! Even if you did know what I’m talking about, you’re authorized to say you don’t, and you probably would even if you weren’t.”
“Alfred, I think you still may be suffering from some lingering effects of the—”
“Oh, you bet. I’ve got lingering effects out the yin-yang! Kidnapped, nearly drowned, thrown from an airplane, shot, and my brain scooped out by something I don’t even believe in! From the beginning you people haven’t leveled with me. Mike didn’t and you’re not now. For all I know you lied to me about my mom.”
“About your mom?”
“About her being dead. Maybe she really isn’t dead. Maybe she’s as alive as you and me and King Paimon.”
“Alfred, your mother died when you were twelve years old, before any of—”
“I know that! Or I knew that! I don’t know what I know anymore. I don’t even know what I don’t know! The inside of my head feels all crumbly, like stale birthday cake left out too long.”
“I see,” Op Nine said. He was frowning, staring at me intensely, which didn’t help matters. I wasn’t crying, but his face was distorted, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror; the earlobes looked particularly long and Goofy-like.
I went on. “But one thing I do know is that you people are hiding something. Something doesn’t add up here.”
I rubbed my temples. The room spun around my aching head. Now it was as if my brain were made of broken glass, like the glass in Betty Tuttle’s hand that fell when Mr. Needlemier said I was worth four hundred million dollars, shattered into a thousand pieces, then slapped back together with glue.
“It doesn’t add up. There’s something you’re not telling me, which is a kind of lie even if you’re not telling a lie lie.”
“ ‘Lie lie’?”
“None of it makes any sense. Why am I here? Why did you bring me, a fifteen-year-old kid with no qualifications whatsoever in the covert op department, on your big mission to find Mike and the Vessel? Tell me why I’m here, Op Nine. Give me one good reason and I’ll shut up and we’ll go get Mike, which there seems to be a very mysterious lack of, the getting part, since that was the reason we flew four thousand miles per hour in the first place to get here. Why are we hanging out in this hotel room? That’s my question.”
“We were waiting for nightfall.”
“Well, it’s almost seven o’clock. It oughtta be fallen by now.”
“Then we ought to be going.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”